As with magic finding, a balance between killing speed and monster level must be found. Struggling to kill very high level monster because they have a.

Levels with a lot of monsters are best, simply to increase the total item drops. Places like the Secret Cow Level , the Flayer Jungle , or the surface areas of Act One with their teeming Fallen camps are popular killing zones due to the high density of fairly weak monsters.

They do fall from time to time, but the odds are lottery-winning low. Better odds are to find lots of runes in the teens and low twenties, and to cube them up, as well as trading other item finds for mid-to-high level runes, and cubing those up as well.

A few monster types have higher odds of dropping runes because they can not drop armor or weapons , and thus spit out more runes since they have fewer other possible drops.

These monsters are worth harvesting while rune hunting, but they spawn infrequently and in underwhelming numbers, so few players will find it worth the effort for the slight increase in the odds of finding runes.

Three quests grant runes as part of their reward. This quest does not have a Rune as part of its reward just a bunch of gold and minor items from a magical chest , but since v1.

Her rune drops were increased still further in v1. The Countess has better odds to drop a higher level rune the first time a player kills her on Nightmare or Hell difficulties, when they get credit for completing the quest.

Her odds of dropping her highest possible runes are always astronomical, but they are slightly better the first time than the other times. She is capable of dropping up to six runes each death, and will often drop two or three.

The runes that may be found from this quest vary by difficulty level. Which one drops is selected randomly from the following possibilities:.

Unlike the runes from The Countess , or any other monster drops in the game, the lower level runes are not more common. Be sure to complete this quest when you can get your rune drop, and do not finish it with other players in your party, if they have not finished the quest already.

This second quest in Act Five is easily accomplished, and your character will receive a Tal r07 , a Ral r08 , and an Ort r09 rune as a reward for completing it.

Not a huge reward, but for players who save all their runes to upgrade, every one helps. Chests this includes barrels, crates, hidden stashes, etc are an excellent source of items, including runes.

See the super quests discussion in the Rune Finder Guide by Urlik for more details. This guide might be helpful. Just go to areas with lots of monsters cow level might be good and collect all gems for transmuting.

Another option to farm runes and gems would be to do hellforge rushes. The Countess is the best rune dropper; she once dropped 4 runes for me!

The higher your clvl, the better the drops throughout the Tower, which will yield chipped gems or a chipped skull ammys a charm and a ring Dense zones with monsters and elites should be your first choice, e.

Cows, council members, even act 1 fallen camps. Alternative but boring way is opening chests in lower Kurast on players 8. By clicking "Post Your Answer", you acknowledge that you have read our updated terms of service , privacy policy and cookie policy , and that your continued use of the website is subject to these policies.

Make your voice heard. Take the Developer Survey now. Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered. From what I can see, the most popular solution was to use a pure-lightning sorc which, by the way, has a much higher-damage main-attack than a dual-tree sorc.

The extra damage was enough to make spanking the Countess and her cronies even easier, and with a good merc and some skillfult play and good equipment they were able to grab their runes If it works for you, then good for you.

If you do this, then you should spend skillpoints into the Telekinesis synergy instead of Energy Shield itself.

The main benefit in this case is to have a mercenary that can kill the Countess quickly on his or her own. The most common solution is, of course, using an Act2 merc that wields a big, mean, hurtful polearm or spear.

With a minimum number of additional players in your game, the Countess will have relatively low life, so a merc should be able to take her down quickly.

So, do you just stand there and make funny faces and rude gestures at the Countess while waiting patiently for your merc to kill her? One more thing about Telekinesis that is sometimes nice, and sometimes annoying, is the knockback.

Another method, that requires a little more finesse is to keep her directly between you and your merc - then the knockback pushes the Countess directly into your merc and he acts as his own wall.

Also, reaching a higher FCR breakpoint will not reduce casting delays. Now that the basics are out of the way The primary reason I feel this is that the majority of your time on a Countess run will be spent teleporting - so if you teleport a little faster each time you cast it, once you start to do hundreds or thousands of runs, that little bit of saved time each run can really add up.

Depending on which shield you choose and your personal preference, it may make sense to pursue max-blocking. One complaint that I do have about blocking on sorcs is their slow block-recovery speed.

If you look at a max-block approach, I also recommend you try to get a little Faster Block Rate on your equipment. Find them too fragile? Whatever the reason, here are some tips that might help you do reasonably well with Countess runs without teleport though you will be slower.

Yes, Teleport is the primary reason for choosing sorceresses. A barbarian can use Whirlwind to twirl directly through a large pack and out the other side.

Third, you NEED crowd-control. Crowd-control skills or items, like a Delerium helm can obviously make the difference between life and death here.

So, what else can I do to help my Countess runner? For me, having tried many different builds against running the Countess, there was one common theme in determining how successful a Countess runner was: But irregardless, once they got to level 85 or 86, it always seemed to provide just enough improvement to make a difference consistently.

Once you get to level 85 or 86, the affect is big enough to be noticable General Strategy for Fast Countess runs: Equip him with gear that helps him, and you, survive.

Other builds might have an exact opposite strategy. The solution, of course, is to not stand close to the Countess. So, do you just resign yourself to fate when you encounter this situation?

Yes this is obvious advice. Choosing the Best Merc and Outfitting Him I stated earlier that during Countess runs, your merc is a tank - he is not a killer - and you want him to survive.

This is telling, since within the Countesses tower physical damage is almost always more dangerous than elemental damage.

Given all of this information there are three primary things that will help keep your merc tanking and keep you alive: If the physical damage is what scares you, why not protect yourself against it?

The same is true for your merc. In my opinion, that means that resistances are a lower priority than damage reduction when running the Countess.

Life Leech aka LL. Act3 mercs seem to die the fastest to those stinking archers. Barbarians are solid, but their available weapons to provide crowd control are much more limited than their Act2 counterparts.

For a sorc, there are two options I like a lot. The first is probably the most common mercenary choice - a Holy-Freeze Dessert Warrior.

Good crowd-control from the aura and decent tanking ability. Prayer mercs tend to be a little more fragile than his other Act2 counterparts however, but if your sorc is taking so much damage that you must drink potions continuously, you might consider trying this option.

Other solid options are the old standards: A must-read for high-end rune hunters playing version 1. Hellforge rushing HFR is perhaps the safest way of getting mid-high runes in 1.

Basically, your goal is getting a character to Act 4 Hell, so you can complete the Hellforge quest in 1. The easiest way of getting a character to Act 4 Hell to get the quest reward is by rushing him, completing only the quests needed to advance acts with the help of a stronger character.

Rushing was easier in 1. Note that there are some technical, and even ethical, difficulties that may be associated to Hell Forge Rushing.

Due to some intricacies within the game mechanics, the actual results for how often the Countess will drop a particular rune are slightly different than the statistical probabilities.

Diablo 2 Countess Video

Diablo 2: 300 Countess Runs Part 2 (Hell vs. Nightmare vs. Normal)

Levels with a lot of monsters are best, simply to increase the total item drops. Places like the Secret Cow Level , the Flayer Jungle , or the surface areas of Act One with their teeming Fallen camps are popular killing zones due to the high density of fairly weak monsters.

They do fall from time to time, but the odds are lottery-winning low. Better odds are to find lots of runes in the teens and low twenties, and to cube them up, as well as trading other item finds for mid-to-high level runes, and cubing those up as well.

A few monster types have higher odds of dropping runes because they can not drop armor or weapons , and thus spit out more runes since they have fewer other possible drops.

These monsters are worth harvesting while rune hunting, but they spawn infrequently and in underwhelming numbers, so few players will find it worth the effort for the slight increase in the odds of finding runes.

Three quests grant runes as part of their reward. This quest does not have a Rune as part of its reward just a bunch of gold and minor items from a magical chest , but since v1.

Her rune drops were increased still further in v1. The Countess has better odds to drop a higher level rune the first time a player kills her on Nightmare or Hell difficulties, when they get credit for completing the quest.

Her odds of dropping her highest possible runes are always astronomical, but they are slightly better the first time than the other times.

She is capable of dropping up to six runes each death, and will often drop two or three. The runes that may be found from this quest vary by difficulty level.

Which one drops is selected randomly from the following possibilities:. Unlike the runes from The Countess , or any other monster drops in the game, the lower level runes are not more common.

Be sure to complete this quest when you can get your rune drop, and do not finish it with other players in your party, if they have not finished the quest already.

This second quest in Act Five is easily accomplished, and your character will receive a Tal r07 , a Ral r08 , and an Ort r09 rune as a reward for completing it.

Not a huge reward, but for players who save all their runes to upgrade, every one helps. Chests this includes barrels, crates, hidden stashes, etc are an excellent source of items, including runes.

See the super quests discussion in the Rune Finder Guide by Urlik for more details. More players in the game increase the quantity of items found from [chest]s, by decreasing the odds that the game will select the "NoDrop" option.

This must be balanced with your overall killing time; taking 3x longer to kill monsters for 2x the drops is not a winning strategy. The level of runes that can be found from chests progresses steadily as you move through the game.

The following list details the highest level runes you can find in any area. All of the lower level runes may also be found there, and in fact are far more likely to appear than the higher level ones.

This changed in v1. Mathematically speaking, expecting to save and transmute the lowest runes into the highest ones is virtually impossible. It would take exactly 3,,, El runes to make a Pul rune, which is one of the first highly tradable runes, and to create your own Zod from El runes you would need 14,,,, El runes and 1,,, assorted gems.

If you are looking to make some of the highest runes you are simply wasting your time collecting any of the lower runes.

Lower runes can be helpful for other purposes though, and are used in various cube and crafting recipes. These odds are accurate or v1.

All Unique Belts Normal: All Unique Armor Normal: Nilathak can drop much higher runes though. This guide might be helpful. Just go to areas with lots of monsters cow level might be good and collect all gems for transmuting.

Another option to farm runes and gems would be to do hellforge rushes. The Countess is the best rune dropper; she once dropped 4 runes for me!

The higher your clvl, the better the drops throughout the Tower, which will yield chipped gems or a chipped skull ammys a charm and a ring Dense zones with monsters and elites should be your first choice, e.

Cows, council members, even act 1 fallen camps. Alternative but boring way is opening chests in lower Kurast on players 8. By clicking "Post Your Answer", you acknowledge that you have read our updated terms of service , privacy policy and cookie policy , and that your continued use of the website is subject to these policies.

Make your voice heard. Take the Developer Survey now. Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered. To add on to this: Kotsu Thanks for that information.

I was in the process of looking it up to add to my answer, but I got distracted. In my normal play through of Act I she dropped 2 Ist and 1 Eld, looking foward to bumping up to higher levels, but still a good result.

Are you sure Baal drops runes? Countess is great place only for mid range runes.

When first killing Countess on Hell, the highest rune that can drop is Lo. A few monster types have higher odds of dropping runes because they can not drop armor or weaponsand thus spit out more runes since they have fewer other possible drops. He seems to have posted an updated version here. Points in increased speed are good idea, and as a adition i used very often Hollywood casino columbus poker room number for clearing doorways, tight areas, and wladimir klitschko familie i found tele charges on items usefull namelly on ammys This guide might be helpful. Nova and Charged Bolt are more similar to evaluate. As for me, i ran a lot o. Note that there paypal löschen kündigen some technical, and even ethical, difficulties that may be associated to Hell Forge Macau casino poker buy in. This item can not be obtained from any other wind up deutsch, and can only be used on the Battle. Yes, Teleport db casino bremen the primary reason for choosing sorceresses. According to legend, the Countess committed a great many gruesome and heinous tipico kombiwette erklärung in her castle, including bathing in the blood of a hundred virgins, before being buried alive. Frozen Orb is - as always - a solid choice. I would say this is relatively consistent with my overall experience. All Unique Axes Normal, one-handed: Oct 9, Messages: